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Pampelmoose writer Robert Ham recently moved from Portland to Seattle. This monthly column will follow him as he gets himself acquainted with a new local music scene.

I tend to take it as a given that if a young woman wants to pick up an instrument or a microphone and start a band, there’s very little that is going to stand in her way. I don’t think I’m alone in this line of thinking. But it wasn’t until hearing Jessica Hopper read from her new book The Girls’ Guide To Rocking, at The Vera Project, that I realized how wrong I was.

As she writes in her introduction, “When I first started playing, I felt like all the boys…were in on a world of top-secret information. I felt like I didn’t have permission to enter that world. Over time, I realized that my love for music was all I really needed. That was my permission slip. I was already in the gang. This book is all the secrets, and also, your permission slip. Welcome to the gang.”

During the Q&A period, she talked about a young boy who came to her reading the day before in Portland. He asked, “Where’s my guide?” As she explained, he didn’t need one. That door had already been wide open for him. Bur far too many girls are never shown the door. Or if they are, they are told precisely what to wear, say and do once they are through it.

This has been on my mind quite a bit, as I watched the debates about the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. And I thought about it when I went to my first concerts as a Seattleite, as both shined a spotlight on some amazing female musicians.

The Valkyries are an all-girl quartet that plays tough, steely-edged rock, taking inspiration from groups like The Runaways, The Gits and Babes In Toyland – in other words, the perfect group for The Blue Moon, a dive bar in the U District. It seemed fitting that lead singer Stevie would shove her way into the melee of men throwing one another around at the foot of the small stage. It felt good to see her grab a bottle of beer and spray it on the crowd. And it felt better knowing that they were the best sounding band on the bill, putting their male counterparts in stark relief by the end of their sweat and bile driven set.

When I spoke with Stevie, we talked about her association with another local rock band and her vodka-fueled night playing at a house party in Portland. It was a perfectly fine rock ‘n’ roll-style conversation. Still, I regret that I didn’t ask them about how they got to where they were and whether they would have been helped along the way with a book like Hopper’s.

I wanted to ask much the same of Jesy Fortino, the young woman who plays under the name Tiny Vipers, after she performed at her CD release show at The Fremont Abbey. But between songs, she looked like she wanted to be anywhere else than in a humid room on a cobbled together stage with 100 or so people staring her direction. By the time she was done, I was surprised she didn’t drop her guitar and run for it. Yet, when she played, any hint of distress disappeared. She melted into her songs, losing herself in the long stretches of acoustic guitar instrumentals and looked meditative as she sang. It was hard though to mesh the two sides of her stage persona. It was like being locked in a warm embrace and then pushed away quickly for fear of it going any further than that.

Although I didn’t get the chance to speak with Ms. Fortino after her performance, I did happen to see the flyer at the Abbey advertising a Girls’ Rock Camp that was starting up a few days later. If I hadn’t had my copy of Hopper’s book signed to my burgeoning rock star daughter, I would drop it off for the young women at the camp to dig into and hopefully get inspired by. Anything I can do to help initiate more members into the gang.